and Reply-To lines are in internet format, and since many
USENET sites do not yet have mailers capable of
understanding internet format, it would break the reply
capability to completely sever the connection between the
Path header and the reply function. Thus, sites are
required to continue to keep the Path line in a working
reply format as much as possible, until January 1, 1984.
It is recognized that the path is not always a valid reply
string in older implementations, and no requirement to fix
this problem is placed on implementations. However, the
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existing convention of placing the site name and an "!"
at the front of the path, and of starting the path with
the site name, an "!", and the user name, should be
maintained at least until 1984.
2.2 Optional Headers
2.2.1 Reply-To This line has the same format as From.
If present, mailed replies to the author should be sent to
the name given here. Otherwise, replies are mailed to the
name on the From line. (This does not prevent additional
copies from being sent to recipients named by the replier,
or on To or Cc lines.) The full name may be optionally
given, in parentheses, as in the From line.
2.2.2 Sender This field is present only if the submitter
manually enters a From line. It is intended to record the
entity responsible for submitting the article to the
network, and should be verified by the software at the
submitting site.
For example, if John Smith is visiting CCA and wishes to
post an article to the network, using friend Sarah Jones
account, the message might read
From: smith@ucbvax.uucp (John Smith)
Sender: jones@cca.arpa (Sarah Jones)
If a gateway program enters a mail message into the
network at site sri-unix, the lines might read
From: John.Doe@CMU-CS-A.ARPA
Sender: network@sri-unix.ARPA
The primary purpose of this field is to be able to track
down articles to determine how they were entered into the
network. The full name may be optionally given, in
parentheses, as in the From line.
2.2.3 Followup-To This line has the same format as
Newsgroups. If present, follow-up articles are to be
posted to the newsgroup(s) listed here. If this line is
not present, followups are posted to the newsgroup(s)
listed in the Newsgroups line, except that followups to
"net.general" should instead go to "net.followup".
2.2.4 Date-Received This line (formerly "Received") is
in a legal USENET date format. It records the date and
time that the article was first received on the local
system. If this line is present in an article being
transmitted from one host to another, the receiving host
should ignore it and replace it with the current date.
Since this field is intended for local use only, no site
is required to support it. However, no site should pass
this field on to another site unchanged.
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2.2.5 Expires This line, if present, is in a legal
USENET date format. It specifies a suggested expiration
date for the article. If not present, the local default
expiration date is used.
This field is intended to be used to clean up articles
with a limited usefulness, or to keep important articles
around for longer than usual. For example, a message
announcing an upcoming seminar could have an expiration
date the day after the seminar, since the message is not
useful after the seminar is over. Since local sites have
local policies for expiration of news (depending on
available disk space, for instance), users are discouraged
from providing expiration dates for articles unless there
is a natural expiration date associated with the topic.
System software should almost never provide a default
Expires line. Leave it out and allow local policies to be
used unless there is a good reason not to.
2.2.6 References This field lists the message ID's of
any articles prompting the submission of this article. It
is required for all follow-up articles, and forbidden when
a new subject is raised. Implementations should provide a
follow-up command, which allows a user to post a follow-up
article. This command should generate a Subject line
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